Skysat

Planet designs, builds, and launches satellites faster than any company or government in history by using lean, low-cost electronics and design iteration. Planet was founded as Planet Labs and rebranded in 2016 to Planet. It remain legally Planet Labs, Inc. and it is incorrect to state that it was ‘formerly Planet Labs’. Planet’s imagery that is posted online via media channel (i.e., Planet.com, social media, and in the press) is done so under creative commons CC-BY SA 4.0. Under this license, users are free to share and adapt the imagery as long as it is correctly attributed, and properly indicate any change that is made to the imagery.

Non-governmental organizations have already used commercial satellite data from companies like Planet to monitor North Korea’s weapons programs. Planet launched its first test satellites in 2013; today, it operates 190 satellites, the largest commercial constellation in the world, and is well on the way to imaging the entire earth daily. With 13 builds in only 3 years, the complimentary coverage and resolution capabilities come from the largest satellite fleet operation. Since 2013 when it launched the first satellite, it has launched over 300. There are about 150 in orbit including Dove, SkySat, and RapidEye constellations and are collecting over 300M sqkm of imagery daily.

1. 130+ DOVE SATELLITES
2. 5 RAPIDEYE SATELLITES
3. 13 SKYSAT SATELLITES

SkySat imagery has a resolution of 0.8 meters per pixel and positional accuracy of < 10m CE90. Equipped with near-infrared, and video capabilities, Planet’s SkySat fleet can revisit any point on Earth at 72 cm resolution and sub-daily revisit, higher frequency than any other commercial hi res imagery provider. Planet’s fleet of 13 SkySats provides customers faster revisit, lower latency, and higher prioritization to enable rapid content acquisition and intelligence. Very high resolution imaging, at 72 centimeter GSD, Rapid response and delivery, and High revisit with collections as frequent as twice-daily.

Planet pairs persistent monitoring with low latency tasking to bring visibility to changing geopolitical landscapes. With Planet’s ML-based analytic feeds, intelligence groups can automatically detect and act on activity-based signals, at scale. Planet monitors Earth’s entire landmass and strategic waters of interest every day at 3-5 meter resolution, to pair with sub-daily, 72 centimeter tasking. Monitor borders, large areas, and distributed areas of interest. Access archive imagery to interpret signals leading up to unexpected events. Increase the chances of cloud-free collections with daily, global coverage.

Planet’s automated Road and Building Detection feeds equip intelligence groups with monthly infrastructure change reports over regions of strategic importance. Detect construction near airfields, bases, ports, and other areas of interest. Uncover signal to inform additional surveillance and reconnaissance. Update foundational maps and charts with the latest ground truth.

Planet’s automated Aircraft and Vessel Detection feeds deliver information on plane and ship activity to inform pattern-of-life monitoring and activity-based analysis. Count ships and planes to establish baseline activity and monitor for abnormalities. Query specific areas and times of interest for ship and plane results. Pair ship detection with AIS to spot spoofing and suspicious activity.

Planet’s Order Management System, soon in alpha, will enable customers to programmatically “cue” 72 centimeter tasking over areas of strategic interest. Automatically “tip” hi res assets off any Planet’s detections or object count thresholds. Integrate your own analytics or triggers to cue tasking requests.

When paired with PlanetScope Monitoring or other intelligence, customers can cue SkySat tasking with greater precision and confidence. Content validation and intelligence with sub-meter resolution detail, Imagery may be tasked in as few as 12 hours upon request, Coming soon: Machine-to-machine tasking workflows and integrations. SkySat New Collections Monitoring includes twice-monthly delivery and archive access to 500+ pre-selected areas of defense and commercial interest. Customers can subscribe to these sites by industry or geography – ideal for pattern analysis, model training, and more.

Planet is venture backed and has raised over $180 million. In 2017, Planet acquired Terra Bella from Google in a strategic partnership that made Google an equity stakeholder in Planet. Planet is growing and had 460 full-time employees as of 2018. It is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with additional offices in Berlin, The Netherlands, Lethbridge, Canada, Bellevue, Washington, and Washington DC.

Terra Bella Skysat

Arianespace successfully launched 15 September 2016 the SkySat-4 to -7 satellites for American operator Terra Bella, a Google company that is a commercial operator of Earth observation satellites. SkySats-4, 5, 6 and 7 are the first four satellites launched by Ariane-space for its new customer Terra Bella. The SkySat-4, -5, -6 and -7 satellites were designed by Terra Bella and built by SSL (Space Systems Loral) using a dedicated SkySat platform, in Palo Alto, California (United States). Each satellite weighed 110 kg at liftoff. They were placed in Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 km, and will provide very-high-resolution (less than one meter) 3D mapping of the entire planet.

The first three satellites of the constellation were launched in November 2013, July 2014, and June 2016, which continue to capture imagery and video across the globe. The third satellite, SkySat-3, includes a propulsion module to support orbit-stationing and enable improvements in resolution.

One of the key enablers of this breakthrough is the ability to capture high-resolution color and near-infrared imagery (90 cm resolution) in a small < 100 kilogram package. It’s like taking a picture of San Diego from San Francisco and being able to see objects up to the size of a car while moving at 5 miles per second.

Skysat also use a two-dimensional sensor array with a proprietary image filter to capture a higher quality image by taking multiple frames per second and stitching them on the ground. This also gives the ability to capture the first-ever commercial high-resolution video of Earth from a satellite.

Founders (Dan Berkenstock, Julian Mann, John Fenwick, and Ching-Yu Hu) wrote the first business plan in 2009 as part of a Stanford graduate entrepreneurship course. They spent 6 months working out of John’s living room. The secured Series A financing of $3M from Khosla Ventures, and moved into a windowless 3,000 sqft office in Palo Alto.

In 2010 the team moved to Mountain View and began building out a testing and manufacturing facility. They completed Series B financing of $18M from Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners. They designed scalable data infrastructure, and completed satellite Critical Design Review for SkySat-1 and SkySat-2. In 2013 they completed design, manufacture, and test of first two spacecraft SkySat-1 and SkySat-2 and Terra Bella HQ. Completed mission operations and production infrastructure to fly the constellation via Chrome.

The company was acquired by Google in 2014. IT successfully launched SkySat-2 aboard a Soyuz-2/Fregat rocket, and bought an Orbital Sciences Minotaur-C rocket to launch 6 additional SkySats out of Vandenberg Airforce Base in 2016.